Distraction
by Inyri Ascending
Summary: She's never been good at pazaak. He's never been good at telling the truth. LSF!Exile/Atton.


**Author's note:** Yes, I know canon Revan is male. My writing, my rules.  
>This was a nice opportunity to revisit an pairing I've long been fond of, as a special request- and my first published attempt at smut. Gods help us all. Enjoy.<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Distraction<strong>

It does not take her long to decide that pazaak is not her forte.

_Plus five. Minus two. Minus eight, flipped, so plus eight- makes seventeen? No- sixteen. _

"Shit." She scowls and throws down the cards still remaining in her hand, scattering them across the console between their chairs. "I lost count. How am I supposed to use this as a distraction?" She sinks back into the co-pilot's seat. "I can't even keep the numbers straight when I'm concentrating."

Atton plucks a card from where it falls between two of the control panel's levers, running his thumb over one creased corner. "You keep bending these cards, I'm going to demand a salary so I can replace them." He gathers up the rest, shuffles, and deals a new round to each of them. "Try counting them out loud this time, not just in your head, and I'll do the same."

"Damnable mercenary- and here I thought you hung around because I'm charming." Setting her side deck away, she flips over the first card. "All right- starting at three."

"You are charming," he grins, and turns over a card of his own, "and I'm a deserter, not a mercenary. Opening with five."

She looks through her extra cards, and sighs. "Three and five for me, minus- no, plus two makes ten... you keep saying that, Atton, and yet you're still here."

The navicomputer chimes insistently; he spins his chair around to face the touchscreen, prodding it with one fingertip and prompting a piercing alarm that shrills from the speakers and sets her teeth on edge. Wincing, Atton pulls a credit chip from his pocket and slots it into the console, then thumps his fist against the side of the screen.

"Problem?" The siren quiets; she unclenches her jaw.

He makes a face, pocketing the chip once more. "Customs fees. One of the many administrative delights of Hutt space."

"The alarm, though?"

"Hutts tend to get real mad when they don't get paid. Don't worry," Atton kicks off his boots, propping up his feet on the right-hand control panel before drawing again, "it's handled. Anyhow- I like it here. Decent food, a fast ship, lousy pazaak players and pretty women... I've got zero incentive to leave." He sets down two cards. "That puts me at thirteen, by the way."

"That's clever of you. We Jedi do terrible things to people who desert, haven't you heard?" Crinkling her nose at his bare feet, she counts out her total. "Ten, six, minus two makes fourteen."

"Isn't that why Malak lost his jaw?" He looks up at her. "That was always the rumor when I- in the cantinas, you know, during the war with the Mandalorians. He tried to split from Revan, and he lost his jaw for it."

"What? No." She turns in her chair to stare at him. "You didn't hear that during the war."

He turns away, focused on his cards- hiding something, she's sure of it. "How can you know that?"

"Malak didn't lose his jaw until after the war, Atton. I don't know what happened between Revan and him, but whatever it was happened after Malachor- and he would never have left her, not then. He followed her around like a pet dog." She sets her cards on the central console and pushes herself up on the armrests of the chair, moving to her feet and taking a step closer to the door.

His fingers wrap around her wrist, pulling her back toward her seat. "Leaving already? We haven't even finished our game."

With eyes narrowed and teeth bared, she yanks her hand away. "You're a fucking liar, Atton Rand, and I don't play games with liars. After everything you told me on Nar Shaddaa, you're still keeping secrets?"

"Hey, hey- fine." He sits up properly and holds out his hands, placating. "Yes. You're right. I did hear it in a cantina, but later, after... I forget, sometimes, that you weren't there when it started to fall apart. You were, well, wherever you were."

She stops, grip tight on the back of the chair, staring out the starboard window at the vanishing horizon of Nar Shaddaa. "No. It fell apart long before Malachor V. She was just doing a better job of hiding it, then."

"I'd hope so. There wasn't much mistaking the two of them when-"

She lifts her arm, sharply. "I don't want to talk about it, Atton. Please."

"Then we won't talk about it." One hand outstretched, he swivels around to face her, half-smiling. "Shake on it?"

She nods, after a moment, and clasps his hand in hers; when she pulls away, he slips her cards back into her palm. "No more secrets, Atton."

"Done and done, and agreed. Back to our game, then."

Settling back into her chair, she shakes her head. "You're incorrigible. And it's still your turn."

"So it is. Thirteen and ten-" he swears, draws from his side deck and then laughs victoriously, tossing down the last card- "minus three is twenty."

She eyes his cards skeptically, but can't deny the arithmetic works out. "Sithspit! And I had fourteen, plus nine, minus one-"

"You lose this round, I'm afraid."

Her head falls back against the headrest as she huffs in frustration, holding her remaining hand out to him to shuffle. "You had it right on one account. I'm a lousy pazaak player. Maybe I should learn to count couplings instead."

"Nah." He chuckles, letting the cards run deftly through his fingers, shuffling and counting out decks for a new game. "You're just learning, that's all; everyone starts out lousy. Besides," he deals them out into neat piles, and gives her back her side-deck, "I wasn't talking about you. Mandalore's awful at it, and he threatens to stab me whenever he loses... not the biggest incentive to play with him, to be honest."

She perches on the edge of the chair, studying the cards, committing them to memory. "So it's the food keeping you here, then. I find that hard to believe."

"Hardly." He wiggles his toes. "Kick off your shoes and stay awhile, won't you? Our jump window's not for an half an hour, and I'll admit I wouldn't mind the company."

She untucks her trouser cuff, undoes the upper buckle of one boot, then pauses. "One comment about my feet and I end you."

"I'm sure they're perfect, dainty Jedi feet."

"Which have been stomping around this shithole planet for the last three days. Sure." The second fastening open, she slides free of her boot with a sigh of relief and rolls her ankle, which cracks satisfyingly. Her left boot quickly joins the right on the cockpit floor and she curls in the chair with her feet tucked beneath her, legs bare beneath her knee-length breeches. "Hm. So, not the food and not the pazaak- tell me the truth, deserter. Why do you stay?"

Atton rolls his eyes. "You're really going to make me spell it out for you? I'll give you a hint, sweetheart, there's one pretty girl on this boat right now and it's not Her Decrepit Majesty out there." He inclines his head at the closed cockpit door, toward the common room.

_Oh. _

"Visas?" Biting back a smile, she glances up at him. "I didn't think she was your type. Mira, then."

He flicks a single card at her; the edge nearly clips her forehead as she lifts her hand to block it. "I'm actually being honest, and _now_ you're mocking me? Cruel woman."

She gathers power around her and sends the card whipping back at him before it touches her, letting it come to rest a hair's breadth from the tip of his nose where it hovers, rotating end over end. Atton blinks, and reaches up to retrieve it. "Perhaps you should start the game, if we're still playing."

"I'm not play- I mean, I was-" He sighs, and lets it drop from his hand onto the console. "Four. You don't believe me."

"I"m not a starry-eyed schoolgirl or a flyboy hanger-on." She sets her first move beside his. "I'm way too old for lines like that to be good enough. Seven."

"Too old? Impossible. You're, what, twenty-five?" He squints, studying her face for a long moment before he draws again. "Count in your head this time, by the way."

She laughs out loud at that, and shakes her head. "You're either a very bad liar, which I know you are not, or you need your vision checked. Add ten."

"In your head."

"To my age, Atton. Add ten- well, nine. Ten next month." She lays down her next move. _Seven and two makes nine, plus three makes twelve. _

For the first time since Peragus, she waits for his reply- the snappy retort or the joke, the tease or the rejection- and it does not come. She huddles a little tighter in her chair, her toes curling against the edge of the padded seat.

(_He stands there with the rest of them, penning her in like a trapped animal, while they pass sentence on her. She keeps waiting for him to say something. He was always so clever, always had just the right thing to say. _

"_Kavar, please help me." Her eyes are red, her eyelids swollen and cheeks wet with tears. "I can't feel it anymore, Kavar. I keep trying to listen and I can't hear it."_

_She knows he can hear her by the way he looks away._

"_Please don't let them do this.")_

She does not look at him when she continues. "I was nineteen when Kavar left, the first time, to fight against the Mandalorians, and twenty-two when I joined Revan. Six days after my twenty-fifth birthday I ordered the destruction of Malachor V, and then-"

"Nine years later, here we are." He sets a single card on the console with a snap of its edge, somewhat harder than necessary; she can still feel his gaze on her forehead, on the faint wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. "I enlisted at eighteen, when the war really got started, if that matters to you. You do the math."

She looks up again and meets his stare, her expression perfectly blank. "Well, I suppose it's up to you whether you like older women." He blinks twice before her words seem to register, and when his cheeks flush crimson she smiles to herself and tosses down her selection for the round. _Thirty-one? No, no, twelve. Twelve and three makes fifteen._

_Best hold there, _she thinks._ Mustn't push too far._

He swallows, and clears his throat. "You don't look- I mean, I was afraid you'd say you were ninety, or something, or that you and Kreia had swapped bodies in some dark ritual or... Force help me, I'm really out of practice at this kind of thing, you know." Turning over the top card with a flick of his wrist, he glances down. "Huh."

"What?"

"I lost." He gathers up his half of the playing field. "I haven't lost a game in years."

"You didn't draw your last side card, though." She sits forward in her chair, shifting weight onto one hip. "You might not be over."

"I know this deck. There's nothing higher than a four in there, and I need a five." He catches her wrist again, splaying her hand flat against the console and setting the card in her palm as she blinks in surprise; he draws back only halfway, his fingertips resting against hers. "See for yourself. You win."

With her other hand she picks it up, raises it to eye level- a minus-two. "I'm sorry, Atton."

"Why be sorry? Like I said, I guess I'm out of practice." He shrugs. "Off my game, y'know?"

She tilts her head, glancing sidelong at their still-touching hands, and does not move. "I'm not sure I was ever _in _practice, assuming we're not still just talking about pazaak."

"Aren't we? I don't know." Atton's voice is muted, so quiet she can barely hear him over the low-pitched hum of the idling engines, as his fingers lace through hers.

"I"m not looking for a noble hero, or a storybook ending." She closes her eyes. His hand is calloused- from firing practice, she'd guess- on the underside of his trigger finger. "I'm pretty sure those don't exist."

He is grinning when she opens her eyes again. "Lucky for you," he snatches the card back from her, tapping it against the tip of her nose, "I'm no hero. I do a pretty fair line in handsome rogue, though."

She cannot help but laugh at that. He lifts their clasped hands; his lips brush across her knuckles, and she fights back a blush that pinks the tops of her ears. "What does that make us, then?"

Their grip on each other relaxes, and his hand falls to his side. "An exiled Jedi and a deserter, sitting in a cockpit, playing cards. Beyond that..." he shrugs, and his unsaid words hang in the air between them like static before a storm. "Shall we play another game?"

"Do we have time? How long until we jump?" She cranes her neck to see the navicomputer.

He turns to the screen for a moment. "Quarter-hour, give or take a minute, but I've got her set to go when the window opens. It should be easy sailing as long as we're strapped in. We have time."

"Another game, then. I think I understand the rules now," she reaches across the console between them, gathering up what remains of the rest of the deck, holding it out to him, "but I need to practice with a distraction, I suppose, if I'm meant to use it as one."

"I happen to be an expert at distraction." Atton rises, humming tunelessly under his breath, and walks a lazy half-circle around their chairs to stand behind her. "What sort would you like- Corellian water torture? Bantha prod? Huttese poetry? Repeated pokes with a sharp stick?" Bending over her, he plucks the cards from her grasp and lingers there, his mouth a scant inch from her ear. "Something more enjoyable, perhaps?"

He straightens again, already moving away when she darts out her hand, catching the sleeve of his jacket with a swift movement. He turns back, startled.

"I'm sorry." His forehead scrunches. "That was-"

_That was your opening. My turn._

"The latter, please." She looks up at him, keeping her hold on his arm. "If you're offering."

He clears his throat again (she catalogues it as a nervous habit). "You're serious."

"Entirely." She spins around to face him before relaxing her grip, with one last sharp tug at his cuff.

His spine goes rigid, and there is a look in his eyes she's not seen before.

"Unless you're too far out of practice?" She crosses and uncrosses her feet at the ankles, one eyebrow arched mockingly.

"I've got a good memory for this sort of thing." Still standing, placing one hand on each of her shoulders, he turns her sharply back to face the front of the cockpit; he holds her against the seat when the abrupt stop threatens to throw her off-balance. Half-crouched behind her chair, Atton leans in until his cheek brushes hers. "Before we begin, we should discuss the rules."

She can barely see him, out of the far corner of her left eye, and tries to turn her head for a better look.

"Let's pretend," he murmurs, letting go of her right shoulder, reaching back to touch something she cannot see before one finger traces a meandering pathway up the side of her neck, "you know a very, very important secret, and I'd like you to tell me. Now, I can't actually read your mind, so we'll play this out loud."

She sinks her teeth into her lower lip as she hears the door lock engage.

He draws back for a moment, and she hears the rustle of shuffling cards, laid down with a soft snap onto the console. "I hold the cards, drawing one per round, which I will show you. You- " four cards fall into her lap, one by one- "hold the side deck. Drawing or holding is up to you."

Looking down to the cards, she turns each one over- all minus cards. She folds them into her palm, closes her hand over them.

"If you reach twenty, the game is over." His breath flutters the hair at the nape of her neck and she shivers, slightly. "If you lose count, the game is over," he presses his lips just behind her ear, "and move, if you like, but if you say a single word that isn't a number, I've found out your secret. The game is over."

She closes her eyes, focuses on keeping her breathing slow and even.

"Shall we begin?" His voice is like an echo inside her skull, his left hand sliding from her shoulder to cup the side of her head. When she nods, Atton's fingers lace through her hair and when she inclines her head toward his hand his grip tightens; her eyelids fly open as he draws, and holds the first card in front of her.

"Six," she whispers.

Scattering a half-dozen kisses down the side of her neck until he meets the folded hood of her robe, he pushes the fabric aside with a nudge; his teeth graze her skin until she's sure she can feel her quickening pulse beneath his mouth. She holds up her right hand, grip tight on her cards as her other hand clings to the armrest of the chair.

"Which one?" He releases her hair to pry open her folded hand.

"Minus two," she shifts in her seat, and feels something slide free from her grasp even as another card appears in view- a three, this time. _Six, minus two, plus three. _She counts it out with her breaths. "Seven," she says, and shudders. She shakes her head when he taps her hand to prompt her and then she can finally see him again, beside her, reaching down for her other wrist, brushing the underside with dry lips and flickering tongue.

In that moment she closes her fingers around his collar and turns, pulling herself to her feet. He opens his mouth in surprise, letting her hand free, and she shoves him against the console and kisses him, hard. The deck balanced there scatters; he catches up a handful and slips them into his belt.

He gets a fistful of her shirt in each hand and pulls as he turns back on himself, sending her staggering across the room to stumble barefoot against the bulkhead wall, catching her there with one hand braced against the surface. "You haven't won yet," he grins, and hisses as she winds one arm up his back, nails digging into his neck; he presses harder against her and she squirms, still clutching her own cards.

Drawing a card from his waistband (_a seven- seven and seven together, count them)_, he holds it up between them. "Fourteen," she says and Atton nods, and lets it fall away.

His free hand slides along the curve of her hip, catching and pulling at the fabric of her robes and slipping beneath; his fingertips brush across bare skin until he pauses at the top of her trousers, and the undergarments beneath. "D'you know," he lifts another card, left-handed, to eye-level, "I've been trying to sort out a way to get past these from the first moment I saw you?"

She looks at it _(three)_ and kisses him again, then, catching his lower lip between her teeth and pulling; his right hand pulls at her laces and slips down, within, and he curls his fingers just so-

She claps her own hand over her mouth to stifle a curse before she speaks it; he bites at her fingers, then at the lobe of her ear. "If you want me to stop," he smirks, his hand beginning a slow rhythm against her as she chokes back another oath, "all you have to do is say so."

She glares at him, defiant, wide-eyed, though her body fights to let her lids drift closed. "Seventeen."

She repeats the count, again and again, keeping the numbers in her mind even as his fingers move between her thighs and she arches thoughtlessly against his touch. _Seventeen_. Her breath hitches in her throat. His other hand draws her clothing down past her hips; she wriggles slightly and lets them fall, stepping free of them, her own hands fumbling with his belt and the fastenings beneath. _Seventeen._

"Play it in your head." He does not stop to draw, not now, and when her knees buckle and she falls back against the bulkhead he presses all the closer. His belt hits the ground with a dull clank. "That's the advantage-" he breathes when her fingers brush against his length, finding him eager, "-of playing in your head. The game always ends the way you want."

She raises herself onto tiptoes and winds one leg around his, barely reaching thigh height on him before Atton lifts her against the wall; his nails rake at her skin, fingers digging into her hips as he enters her, her arms circling his neck and ankles locked together behind his back.

She cannot help herself, and buries her face against his shoulder with a stifled moan. They start to move together, settling into a frenzied rhythm, breaths coming in short, stuttering gasps in time with one another. He nudges her cheek with his forehead, insistent; she turns her head from his shoulder to look to him, and when he captures her mouth with his she is lost.

For the first time in so many years, pinned between him and the wall of a ship, she thinks she can hear the stars, and when he shudders, pushing into her for the last time and holding her hips tight against him, he whispers her name.

He lets her down, slowly, one foot and then the other making contact with the ground; she stands, then, still leaning against him, their breathing still in synchrony.

"I hate to admit this," Atton mutters, "but I may have lost count."

She laughs, threading her fingers through his. "Twenty," she murmurs against his lips. "I believe that was twenty."


End file.
